i dont regard american television as an information source--i see it more as an ideological relay, an opinion management tool that is particularly seductive and problematic because the footage broadcast gives the illusion that the infotainment you get is derived from, comments on and feeds back into a world that is coherently presented to you by way of that imagery.
but it is obvious at every point that there is NO depth to it.
there is no context---and without context, there is no meaningful information.
24/7 cable news outlets oscillate between being-reactive and providing interpretations that are about aligning the range of "acceptable" opinion with the superficiality of the content presented. this so that you can assure yourself that by reacting to a reactive medium, you are "staying informed" enough to keep you watching through the infotainment segments until the commercials come. and it is self-evident that in a commercial television context, what matters are that commercials.
say something big blows up--you know, explodes. like a building or a city block. if you want to see the hole, television can help you. if you want to understand why it happened, and if the explanation for it runs beyond "a sewage line exploded" or some such, television won't help you. and if you are trying to figure out a political action, it actively gets in the way.
american television is a joke.
this is a choice.
there's money to be made and chumps to be had.
i operate at a lag.
depending on the issue, i will cruise around within a matrix of sources.
for running infotainment,
www.guardian.co.uk
www.lemonde.fr
www.liberation.fr
www.washingtonpost.com
www.nyt.com
for deeper coverage of political questions, le monde diplomatique is quite good.
i sometimes listen to bbc
there are some other radio shows i'll check out from time to time.
beyond that, what i read is a function of what the issue at hand happens to be.
it helps to know how to research: it speeds things up.